[Calvin Locke]

... her doctoral dissertation ...

Hers? Or the one she submitted? (If the rumors are true).

So, if it was puerile, was it because the Clintons couldn't find somebody capable that would work for peanuts, or because if it was a worthy paper, no one reading it and had met Chelsea would believe she could actually write it?

[Migraine]

You make some good points, esp the part about a poltergeist writer.

[JoeFromSidney]

You reminded me of something. Years ago, at a conference (and after I had earned my own doctorate in mathematics), I met a guy who made a living as a ghost writer for PhD dissertations. They were always in some soft subject, not a hard science. I have no idea how many fraudulent PhDs are out there through this guy's work, but there must be quite a few. I'm always wary of people who have doctorates in some soft subject. Did they hire this guy, or someone like him? He told me that in one of his ghost-written dissertations, he had even used one of his earlier fakes as a reference. Thus there's now a chain of fraudulence.